Thursday, June 18, 2020

What Should We Have Done?

Based on what we know about the pandemic and Covid-19 now, what should we have done back in time, say on Mar. 1.  Obviously, I think, we should have been ordering supplies, PPE, ventilators, whatever.  But given that we lacked sufficient tests, supplies, and contact tracers, what should we have done?

To me the answer is we should have focused on the areas and facilities which resulted in the most human contact--the dense areas of NY, NJ, MA, etc., the assisted living facilities, the prisons, the meat packing facilities.  For those areas we might have been stuck with the tactics we ended up using, social distancing, lockdowns, quarantines.

For the other areas I think we should have tried to leap to our current Phase II/III strategies, more distancing and lots of contact tracing. 

This two-part strategy might have been a tough sell; in an emergency we like to think everyone is treated the same.  But we've seen the problems in maintaining a uniform strategy across states, and the nation.

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